Pirate Gold | Page 6

figure of
Manuel Silva elegantly outlined against the sky, he bowed sardonically
to the swaying schema of his ancient messmate. It excited some little
comment on the African trader at the time; but the usual professional
esprit de corps keeps sailors from asking too many questions about the
intimate professional conduct of their messmates in earlier voyages.
But that is why De Soto made no draft upon the credit side of his
account at the Old Colony Bank; and James Bowdoin's Sons continued
to carry the deposit on their books "for the benefit of whom it may
concern." And so McMurtagh, who had taken little Mercedes Silva
home that day, continued to make a home for her there, his old mother
and his father aiding and abetting him in the task; and he carried her
young life, in addition to his other burdens, "for the benefit of whom it
may concern."
"Whom it may concern" is too old a story, in such cases, ever to be
thought of by the actors in them.

VI.

James McMurtagh was one of that vast majority of men who live,
function, work, in their appointed way, and are never heard from, like a
good digestion. This is the grand division which separates them from
those who, be it for good or evil, or weakness even, will be protagonists.
Countless multitudes of such men as Jamie must there be, to hold the
fabric together and make possible the daring spins of you, my lords
Lovelace, and you, Launcelots and Tristrams, and Miss Vivien here;
who weave your paradoxical cross-purposes of tinsel evil in the sober
woof of good.
No one knew, or if he knew remembered, what was Jamie's age. When
he was first taken in by the house, he described himself as a "lad;" but
others had not so described him, or else had taken the word as the
Scotch, not for English youth, but for male humanity,--wide enough to
include a sober under-clerk of doubtful age. Jamie's father had been a
drayman, in the employ of the house, as we have said, until his middle
was bisected by that three-inch tire weighted with six puncheons of
Jamaica rum.
Jamie had been brought over from Scotland when veritably
young,--some months or so; had then been finished in the new-fangled
American free schools, and had come up in the counting-room, the day
of the accident, equipped to feed his broken-backed father, with
knowledge enough to be a bookkeeper, and little enough pride to be a
messenger. Only, he had no spirit of adventure to fit him for a
supercargo,--even that brushed too close upon the protagonist for him;
and so he stayed upon his office stool. While other clerks went away
promoted, he ticked off his life in alternation from the counting-room
to the bank; trustworthy on that well-taught street with any forms of
other people's fortunes, only not to make his own, and even trustworthy,
as we have seen it go unquestioned, with this little Spanish girl.
Jamie took her home to his parents, and for his sake they fell down and
worshiped; with them she lived. The father had had too much rum upon
him to care much for the things remaining in this life; after such
excessive external application, who could blame him for using it
internally more than most? The mother's marital affection, naturally,

was moderated by long practice of mixing him hot tumblers with two
lumps of sugar, and of seeing the thing administered more dear to her
spouse than the ministering angel. But the mother worshiped Jamie,
and Jamie worshiped the little girl; and the years went by.
It was pretty to see Jamie and his mother and the little girl walking to
church of a Sunday, and funny to hear Jamie's excuses for it afterward.
"'Tis the women bodies need it," said he to Mr. James Bowdoin, who
rallied him thereupon.
"But surely, Jamie," said Mr. James, "you, who have read Hume until
you've half convinced us all to be free-thinkers,--you'd have your
daughter as well educated as yourself?"
"Hersel'," said Jamie, meaning himself,--"hersel' may go to ta deevil if
he wull; ta little lassie sall be a lady." (Jamie's Scotch always grew
more Gaelic as he got excited.) It was evident that he regarded religion
as a sort of ornament of superior breeding, that Mercedes must have,
though he could do without it. And Mr. James Bowdoin looked in
Jamie's eye, and held his peace. In those days deference was rigidly
exacted in the divers relations of life: a disrespectful word would have
caused McMurtagh's quick dismissal, and the Bowdoins, father and son,
would have been made miserable thereby.
"The lad must have his way with the little girl," said Mr. Bowdoin (now
promoted to that title by